(CW: Mentions of suicide, cancer and menstruation)
Hi, long time lurker, only recent poster, I'm usually shy online but I'm getting increasingly desperate. I don't know how to cope with waiting. I'll be honest, nothing in my transition has gone right. Even after 8 years of T and living stealth that whole time I don't really pass, even now I have to do a lot of laughing off comments that I look like a girl ("I get that all the time") and sometimes deadass denying I've transitioned (I'm over debating whether or not this is 'wrong', I
have to to it for my own peace of mind). My T levels have never been stable, so I don't feel I've gotten as much out of it as I 'should' have. It doesn't help that I've been having bleeding consistently the whole time to deal with every month, on top of recently having to have a lot of cancer tests in organs I wish I didn't own (it's probably fine, but since it's problems with those organs specifically, I feel like I'm in a bad medical drama).
I have so much love and respect for other trans people, but I have so much trauma that surrounds it, I've never really been able to accept my own transness. Others carry their transness with so much more courage and elegance and joy than I ever can. I've tried detransitioning, I've had what was effectively conversion therapy and I tried to kms. Against my will, I'm still trans.
I know other people have had it much harder and waited much longer, but after 4 years of waiting for phallo and not even being on the real waiting list, I don't know how to cope. I know I'm lucky to have got this far, I'm lucky to be on this list at all and not still waiting for a GIC appointment like so many people in the UK. But I've seen people who have realised they're trans, come out, started HRT and had every surgery they're planning to within the time I've been on this waiting list, and whilst I'm happy for them, it's hard to see. I don't go places, I don't have friends anymore, a partner is never going to happen, money is incredibly tight and I can't hold down a job because of my mental state. I'm in no way capable of living a normal life until I have these surgeries. I'm trying not to let myself believe phallo will be this magical cure that will fix all my problems, I know it won't, but it's what my whole transition has been for, it's all I've ever wanted. Especially with feeling like my body doesn't want me to transition, while my mind has no choice, I don't know how to keep waiting. I don't know how to stop counting the days.